Bunnies & Eggs

What have bunnies and eggs got to do with Jesus? Some people ask this, most people are happy to celebrate the christian meaning of Easter along with the bunnies and all, without really caring that there is no connection between the two, but could there actually be one?

I've been reading a lot about the "ancients" as they're called, particularly the Romans, those fine people who gave us roads, government and after a few rough years, christianity*.

Like other Pagans, as they were before the big conversion, they had a festival to celebrate the coming of spring. They celebrated with food, sex and sacrifices to gods that dealt with "spring-like" themes. One of the gods was Pietrus, who was the god of "making the streams flow". He was in the form of what basically looked like a giant rabbit, but with wings, and he laid eggs. It's all coming together now isn't it? But wait there's more.

Where does Christ fit into all of this. Well, the Romans, being Romans, didn't celebrate their spring festivals in quite the same way as other people. Their celebrations were a little more gory. Pietrus was a particularly brutal god. He demanded one human and 15 rabbits for every festival, and the spring festival was particularly important, because if the streams didn't flow, there'd be no water, so he demanded more. Only one human still, but 100 rabbits.

What they did with the rabbits, (and unfortunate human) was to strangle them, and bleed them. Some Romans, (usually the lower classes) used the blood as a kind of rejuvenating ointment. They believed that if they smeared the blood over themselves they would have good health, be fertile, and the crops would be good that year. The more "important" folk sneered at this kind of activity, their ceremony was to pour the blood into an urn and keep it in the house for a day.

This went on for a long time, until the Roman Empire converted to Christianity. They were christians now, and christians don't do that sort of thing anymore! But tradition is hard to break so it went on for a while. The human sacrifice died out after a few years, they had the sacrifice of Jesus now, they didn't have to have a new man every year, and after a while the effort of going and getting the rabbits every year became a real pain, and the suffering of Jesus on the cross was enough to satisfy their bloodlust, so the bunnies instead became the embodiment of Pietrus, the god who didn't exist anymore.

And, just like Pietrus (Peter Rabbit) they delivered eggs. And this existed alongside in perfect harmony with the other more "christian" observation. Lent and Passover came later, which I will go into more detail in another post.

So there you go, bunnies and Jesus, really aren't all that incompatible.

* I know the Romans didn't invent Christianity, but the Empire's conversion and colonization of Europe pretty much made the Western World Christian.